Pete Williams: Comey's decision was influenced by Trump.

NBC News Justice Correspondent Pete Williams reported on Sunday that Donald Trump’s baseless claim of a “rigged” election influenced FBI Director James Comey to break with the Justice Department’s policy against taking actions that could influence elections.

Although longstanding Department of Justice guidelines have cautioned against disclosing investigative steps within 60 days of an election, Comey recently informed Congress that he had directed the FBI to investigate newly found emails that may or may not be relevant in the probe of Hillary Clinton’s private email server.

Williams explained on Sunday that Comey, in part, broke with tradition — just 11 days before the election — because of Trump’s bogus warnings about a “rigged” system.

“They believe that they did the right thing by telling Congress about this development,” Williams said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “And their logic goes something like this, that the fact that the discovery of these emails was going to leak, that if it leaked it would come out in all sorts of different ways and be interpreted in all sorts of different ways and that the best way to handle it was just to get out in front of it.”

“And secondly,” he continued, “they thought that if they waited until after election and then it was discovered that they had found these emails, that would play into this whole scenario about how the system is rigged.”


http://www.rawstory.com/2016/10/nbcs-pete-williams-trumps-bogus-rigged-talk-pushed-comey-to-break-doj-rules-on-elections/

No words...

For fuck's sake, CNN

Hillary and Trump are speaking at the same time so they go to Trump. They love them some horse race.

Latino voters in Texas being intimated at their homes by vigilantes.

Early voting started six days ago in Texas and many counties are already reporting record turnouts. Many polling places are also seeing complaints and tension in this contentious election.

On Saturday State Representative Ramon Romero of Fort Worth and the United Hispanic Council denounced what they call voter suppression and intimidation in Tarrant County. Romero said he received reports from several voters saying "vigilantes" had come to their doorstep and asked them questions about the voting.

"This is harassment and it's something I wouldn't want to see anyone go through," Romero said.

Romero said he's talked to six voters who report individuals knocking on their door. He said the voters he talked to followed the rules and didn't violate any election laws.

"These voters are all seniors and Hispanic. This left them scared," Romero said.

http://www.wfaa.com/news/politics/early-voting-in-texas-high-turnout-high-drama/344257736

Don't tell Californians their votes do not matter. Early voting draws long lines in LA County

It's the first weekend of early voting for a half-dozen sites across Los Angeles County — and polling stations are already packed.

A line of voters wrapped around the block outside of the North Hollywood Regional Library Saturday. A similar line stretched down the street an out of West Los Angeles College in Culver City.

Brenda Duran is with the L.A. County Registrar's Office. She says this doesn't mean crowds will swarm polling places on November 8.

"On Election Day, we do have about 4,000 polling places. And these are just five sites in L.A. County that we opened, so there will be a lot more polling places open on that day," she tells KPCC.

Roughly 5.2 million people have registered to vote in L.A. County. About 2.3 million vote-by-mail ballots have been sent out countywide.

"A lot of people tend to find that when they can fill out their ballot at home, they can take as much time as they want. And then also it's convenient if they want to just drop it off in the mail on their way to work," Duran says.




http://www.scpr.org/news/2016/10/29/65848/early-voting-draws-long-lines-in-la-county/

Trump Suggests That Election Officials Will Throw Away Mail-In Ballots

Donald Trump suggested in a speech at a Colorado rally on Saturday that election officials will throw away mail-in ballots if they don't "like" them.

"I have real problems with ballots being sent," Trump said, according to a transcript by NBC's Ali Vitali and Emily Gold. "People say, oh, here's a ballot, bing. Here's another ballot, throw it away. Oh, here's one I like, we'll keep that one."

Trump claimed that there are "a lot of people" watching election officials.

"We're trying to have some pretty good supervision out there," he said. "We have a lot of people watching you people that collect the ballots."



http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-claims-election-officials-throw-away-mail-in-ballots

FBI still does not have warrant to review new emails

FBI Director James Comey wrote his bombshell letter to Congress on Friday about newly discovered emails that were potentially “pertinent” to the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server before agents were able to review any of the material because the bureau had not yet gotten a search warrant to read them, three government officials who have been briefed on the probe told Yahoo News.

When Comey wrote the letter, “he had no idea what was in the content of the emails,” one of the officials said, referring to recently discovered emails that were found on the laptop of disgraced ex-Rep. Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Weiner is under investigation for allegedly sending illicit text messages to a 15-year-old girl.

As of Saturday night, the FBI had still not gotten approval from the Justice Department for a warrant that would allow them to read any of the newly discovered Abedin emails, and therefore are still in the dark about whether they include any classified material that the bureau has not already seen.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/comey-wrote-bombshell-letter-to-congress-before-fbi-had-reviewed-new-emails-220219586.html?client=safari

Trump supporter shouts "Jew-S-A" at the press

Roll Call: What is your most interesting LOCAL race?

We have a hotly contested Dem vs Dem State Senate race covering San Francisco and bits of Marin and San Mateo Counties. Scott Winer and Jane Kim are both second term members of the Board of Supervisors and are proxies between the Progressive and Moderate wings of the city (moderate being a relative term here). One candidate was endorse by Bernie Sanders and the other was supposedly blessed by Hillary (but I don't think they've even met).

Hard choice to make because I personally do not like either candidate, so I made a deal with myself. They would pretty vote the same in the Senate so I decided to send Wiener to Sacramento and keep Kim on the Board as a check on our terrible mayor, Ed Lee.

Roll Call: Who has voted and where?

I voted two weeks ago in California.